VIII. 1815. CHAP. dation of the public naval stores which was going on at Cronstadt, where cordage, anchors, and sails belonging to the Crown were publicly exposed at the bazaar, and purchased at a low price by foreigners. Nicholas instantly ordered an officer with three hundred men to surround the bazaar; and upon doing so, ample proofs of the truth of the charges were discovered. Orders were given to prosecute the delinquents with the utmost rigour, and the imperial seal was put on the dilapidated stores; but the culprits were persons of great consideration; in the night of the 21st June following, a bright light was seen from St Petersburg to illuminate the western sky, and in the morning it was cautiously whispered that the bazaar had been totally consumed by fire, and with it the whole evidence of the guilt of the accused. The Gazette of St Petersburg made no mention of the fraud, ii. 180, 182. or of the conflagration by which its punishment had been prevented.1 1 Schnitzler, 52. As a set-off to this inherent vice and consequent weakEmigration ness in the Russian empire, there is one most important is all inter- source of strength which is every day contrasting more in Russia nal. strongly with the opposite cause of decline operating in western Europe. Emigration among them is very general in no country in the world is a larger proportion of the population more able and prepared, on the slightest motive, to locate themselves in fresh habitations. Armed with his hatchet on his shoulder-his invariable auxiliary the Muscovite peasant is often inclined to leave his log-house and his fields, and carve out for himself fresh ones in some distant or more fertile forest. Followed by his flocks, his mares, and his herds, the Cossack or the dweller on the steppes is ever ready to exchange the pasture of his fathers for that of other lands. But there is this vital difference between these migrations and the emigration of western Europe--they are internal only; they do not diminish, they augment the strength of the VIII. 1815. State. From the British Islands, at this time, an annual CHAP. To this it must be added that the introduction of the free-trade system into Great Britain has already given a very great impulse to agricultural industry in Russia, where it is advancing as rapidly as it is declining in the British * EMIGRATION FROM THE BRITISH ISLES, 1850-1852. 240,000 240,000 250,000 730,000 Total Annual Decrease. 40,484 95,966 118,764 255,214 -Emigration Report, March 1853. The annual increase of the births over the 1815. 53. pulse to industry in free trade. CHAP. Islands. As this change has arisen from the necessary VIII. effect of the wealth, civilisation, and advanced years of the British empire, so there is no chance of its underGreat im going any alteration, and it must come every day to evince agricultural a more powerful influence on the relative strength and Russia from fortunes of the two empires. Even before the free-trade system had been two years established in Great Britain, it had, despite the rude system of agriculture there prevalent, nearly doubled the exportation of grain from the harbours of Russia,* and tripled its value, while it has caused the production of cereal crops in the British Islands to decline 4,000,000 of quarters. The effect of such a continued and increasing augmentation on the one side, and decline on the other, cannot fail ere long to exercise a powerful influence on the fortunes and relative strength of the two empires; and when it is recollected that the increase is given to a young and rising, and the drain taken from an old and stationary state, it may easily be foreseen how important in a short time the difference must become. 54. destiny of What, then, is the destiny of Russia ?—for a destiny, What is the and that a great one, she evidently has. Her rapid Russia? growth and ceaseless progress through all the mutations of fortune in the adjoining states clearly bespeak not only consummate wisdom of general internal direction, but the * EXPORTATION ON AN AVERAGE OF THREE YEARS OF WHEAT, BARLEY, AND OATS FROM RUSSIA. Captain Larcom has reported that the wheat produce of Ireland has declined 1,500,000 quarters since 1845; and the return of sales in the market-towns of England indicates a diminished production of wheat alone in Great Britain of at least 2,500,000 quarters more. Free trade in England. VIII. 1815. evolutions of a mighty design. She is probably not in- CHAP. tended to shine in the career of civilisation. Her sons will not, at least for long, rival the arts of Italy or the chivalry of France, the intellect of England or the imagination of Germany. There will be no Shakespeares or Miltons, no Racines or Corneilles, no Tassos or Raphaels, no Schillers or Goethes, amidst the countless millions of her boundless territory; but there may be there will be— an Alexander, an Attila, a Timour. Literature, science, the arts, are the efflorescence of civilisation; but in the moral, not less than the physical world, efflorescence is succeeded by decline, the riches of the harvest border on the decay of autumn. There is a winter in nations as well as in seasons; the vulture and the eagle are required to cleanse the moral not less than the physical world. If the glories of civilisation are denied to Russia, she is saved from its corruption; if she does not exhibit the beauties of summer, she is not stained by its consequent decay. Hardened by suffering, inured to privation, compelled to struggle eternally with the severities of climate, the difficulties of space, the energy of the human character is preserved entire amidst her ice and snows. From thence, as from the glaciers of the Alps, the destroying but purifying streams descend upon the plenty of the vales beneath. Russia will evidently conquer Turkey, and plant her eagles * TABLE SHOWING THE INCREASE OF RUSSIA SINCE 1462. СНАР. 1815. 55. on the dome of St Sophia; she will do what the Crusaders failed in doing-she will rescue the Holy Shrines from the hands of the Infidels. But that, though an important part, is not the whole of her destiny. Still, when the Cross is seen triumphant over the wide expanse of the Lower Empire, will her millions remain in their snowy deserts, invigorated by necessity, hardened by suffering, panting for conquest. She is never destined to be civilised, save for the purposes of war; but she is destined to do what intellect and peace can never do. Scythia will for ever remain what it has been from the earliest times-THE STOREHOUSE OF NATIONS, THE SCOURGE OF VICIOUS CIVILISATION. It has been well observed, that the great difficulty in Two differ- Russia is, that it contains, in a manner, two different ent people in Russia. people; the one on a level with the most highly civilised states of Europe, the other, at the utmost, only fashioned to civilisation by the police. The Marquis Custine says, "it contains a society half barbarous, but restrained in order by fear;" and though that is by no means true of the first people, it is strictly so of the last. The interests, feelings, and desires of these two different people are irreconcilable; an impassable abyss separates them. That which the first desires with the most passionate ardour, is a matter of indifference or unintelligible to the other. The highly-educated classes, acquainted with the society, familiar with the literature, impregnated with the ideas of western Europe, often sigh for its institutions, its excitements, its freedom. The immense mass of the peasantry, the great majority of the trading classes, repel such ideas as repugnant to their feelings, at variance with their habits, subversive of their faith. The first long for parliaments, elections, constitutional government, a national literature, a free press; the latter are satisfied to go on as their fathers did before them, with their Czar, their bishops, their popes-obeying every mandate of government as a decree of the Most High; desiring, |